Value

Pete and Sam both have a "treasure box" where they can keep all of those valuable trinkets they pick up here and there. Pete's treasure box has about two dozen objects of various origin. Too much to detail here - perhaps he will write about them on his blog sometime.

Sam's box currently contains these two objects:


We found the army man on the beach in Nags Head, and the silver keychain guy was found lying in the parking lot of dad's office. We think he may be the offspring of an unholy union between the Michelin Man and the Pillsbury Dough Boy. As you can see, the situation in the treasure box has grown a bit tense for this little guy at the moment.

Of course, Sam has developed an attachment to these objects, so he does not want us to get rid of them. It is interesting to think about the concept of intrinsic value vs. market value for objects. My old toothbrush has $0.00 value, but if Paris Hilton used it to murder Clay Aiken it would instantly become one of the most sought after objects in the known universe. So it is fun sometimes to take objects and attach sentimental value to them.

Starburst Spinner

Here is one of Pete's recent K'nex creations. I think it is called the Starburst Spinner, but he will correct me otherwise.


Here is what they are thinking in the picture:

Pete: "Oh no! Sam is deviously planning to destroy my Starburst Spinner!"

Sam: "I am planning to destroy this Starburst Spinner."

Today's Assignment

Snow Bath

The boys were not interested in going outside yesterday to play in the 7 inches of fresh snow, so I brought some in for them to play with in the bath.

Rea's Party

Pete went to a party Friday night at Chuck E. Cheese. It was for Rea, a girl in his class.

Fortunately, there was another boy at the party too (one of Pete's friends, Mitchell). Pete shared his extra tokens that he brought with Mitchell. He informed me later that in fact he gave most of his tokens to Mitchell. Of course, this brought back memories of the vending machine from camp last summer.

It is a tricky concept what to teach children about sharing. For me personally, I often get more joy out of giving something away than from using it myself. Of course you want to teach sharing, and giving. But on the other hand you don't want them to give away most of what they have to others. Or do you?

This raises the broader question - do you always teach what you believe is right, but more difficult? Or do you teach what is the norm in society, if perhaps that will cause less heartache? What about other beliefs that go against the prevailing sentiment of society? Do you teach those things? As another example, do people endorse the vesre of the Bible where Jesus says "If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well."? How many of these people do you think honestly teach that principle to their children?

Next Friday Pete has another birthday party at, you guessed it, Chuck E. Cheese's.

Exercise

Although this may appear to be part of a karate routine, Pete and Sam are actually doing an exercise video that we checked out of the library. This particular exercise utilizes a move called the "tiger claw". Now if we can just get a DVD which includes an exercise called "go outside", then we would have something.

Bad Strategy

When I put Pete to bed last night, I said "don't call me for anything, I still need to eat dinner." Usually this is enough to keep things quiet, but 20 minutes later I heard him calling me.

So I had an idea. I would bring my sandwich with me to his room. Then I would cover him up, point to the sandwich, and head back downstairs.

I was just exiting his room, when I heard a faint "hey, what kind of sandwich is that?" 15 minutes of questions later, it was clear that the sandwich strategy had backfired.

Hair Hair Everywhere

Do you remember the poem about "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out"? Well, replace Sarah with Pete, and replace garbage with "get his hair cut".

Here is a picture of Pete from about a week ago:


Here is my computerized projection of what he will look like by Friday:


We've been trying to explain to him how dreadfully long and messy his hair is getting. But he always twists it around to not be a big deal. Example:

Me: Did your cousins tease you about your long hair when you saw them last weekend?
Pete: No, in fact they only asked me one question about it.
Me: Oh. What question was that?

Pete: They just wanted to know how many months ago was the last time I had it cut.

Something Wonderful

Something wonderful happened this week.

It began with a nasty ice storm. It sleeted so hard on Tuesday evening that Sam was awakened at various times during the night. School was cancelled for the rest of the week. Of course, this means karate is cancelled also. We had to shovel heavy ice in frigid temperatures. While shoveling, we noticed that one of the car windows had shattered. We had to make many phone calls to get the repair scheduled. The repair place cancelled at the last minute, leaving mom and the boys unable to take the car to Virginia Beach. The best remaining option was to meet for lunch and swap vehicles, so dad could work on clearing out the shards of the broken window and patch it until such time that we can re-schedule the repair.

So we all met for lunch to swap vehicles, and had a wonderful family lunch together. I am overjoyed that a broken window gave us an unscheduled opportunity for a great lunch together.

Interactive Bedtime Stories

Once in a while I make up a bedtime story for Pete instead of reading an ordinary story. When there’s time, we do it “Choose Your Own Adventure” style, so Pete gets to determine the course of the story. The characters in the story are usually two young boys, with names like Jete and Yam or Geet and Spam.

Here are some examples of choices Pete would have in the story. See if you can decide which one Pete would choose in each example:

Jete’s mom calls him in to the house for lunch. If he puts his bike away in the garage, turn to page 35. If he leaves it out where Yam might try to ride it, turn to page 40.

If Yam puts the vegetables onto his plate, go to page 52. If he puts them into the blender, go to page 57.

If Geet sits to wait for someone to bring a key, go to page 80. If he tries to use Spam’s head as a battering ram, go to page 86.

Deliberate Practice

I thought this paper about "deliberate practice" was interesting. It addresses the myth that massively superior achievement is predicated entirely upon being born with a genetic gift. The true differentiator, according to the study, is an individual's ability to apply deliberate practice. This essentially means practicing something for many hours a day, for years, with directed goals toward greatness.

At first I found this discovery to be encouraging. This means that our children can achieve greatness, even if they are not at the top of their field at the youngest age.

But then as I thought about it, I was discouraged. You still need to be born with a rare gift. It is just the wrong gift that people look for. The gift is not skill. The gift is a rare sense of dedication.

I have come across many parents who feel that their child is one of those gifted geniuses in one field or another. Of course, it is almost impossible for them to see through their own bias. So something I would suggest for them is to think about whether they objectively find that the child will work at an endeavor for hours, pushing through frustration, showing marked, self-directed improvement over time. If so, then they really do have something exceptional.

Spotted on the Marquee

Once or twice on each episode of Drake and Josh, they flash a marquee prior to a scene at the movie theatre where Josh works. It is only on the screen for about 1-2 seconds, so I never paid any attention to the various movie names that are displayed. But yesterday Pete noticed something and asked us to rewind it.

Spelling Practice

Over the weekend, we did some spelling practice at the dinner table. I printed out a list of the all-time most popular tags on Flickr, and Pete and Sam would take turns with a word. On your turn, you need to spell your word and then give a definition (without using the word in the definition). I was pleased that Pete knows how to spell words like Chicago and landscape. Sam did not fare as well.

Me: "Sam, your word is car"
Sam: "b-e-q-u-p-l"
Pete: "Well, at least he did u after q"


Then Pete gave me a word to try:

Pete: "Your word is San Francisco"
Me: "San Francisco. A large, coastal city in Northern California where the 49ers play football."
Pete: "Pretty good. Except you used the word in the definition."

A Patriotic Song

Click the picture below to see Pete singing a song he learned for a show they will be doing at school.

Lo and Behold

Went searching for something on Youtube yesterday and found a surprise.

1. Go to Youtube

2. Search for "Drake and Josh". This is the name of a popular kids' TV show.

3. Scroll down on the first page of results.

When we tried this, we saw the following video with a history of 7,646 views:

Mosh Pit

If the concept of a Mosh Pit did not already exist, there is no doubt that Pete and Sam would have created it. Specifically, if you play any song by My Chemical Romance between dinner and bedtime, the living room will be instantly transformed into a mass of injury.

Spyro Skateboard

Pete called me at the office this afternoon to let me know the important news that he set a new record on Spyro Skateboarding II. He successfully performed the following moves in 2 minutes:

Half-pipe Leap
Triple Twisted Lime
Gnasty Gnorc
Double Twisted Lemon
Triple Towers
Quad Back Flip
Dr. Shemp
Thrash Master

Pretty Cool, Huh?

It does not take much for Sam to get excited. For example, a random lego creation will do.

The interesting thing I noticed when I looked back at this picture is that at the bottom of Sam's shirt is says "Pretty cool, huh?" - like a little caption for his lego thing. Too bad the shirt doesn't say what exactly it is supposed to be.

Greg Crittenden Memorial Park

We did a geocache last Saturday that was in a park just a few miles from the house.

First Snow 2007

Last Sunday we got our first bit of snow for the year. Not much, but enough for a little bit of sledding on the driveway and a snowman.

Red Lightning

Here is Sam's car that he decorated when Pete was building his car for the Pinewood Derby.

The little guy was taped on with scotch tape, but the tape came off before we took this picture.

Celebrate

We took Pete and Sam to Chuck E. Cheese's Saturday night, to celebrate the completing of Pete's homework chart and Sam's potty chart. If you bring your completed chart, you get 10 free tokens.



One thing you need to be at peace with when you go to CEC is that at exactly one moment, at a time which is determined at random, you will have no idea where Pete and Sam are for approximately 3-5 minutes. Then they will materialize again and you can proceed with the celebration.

I thought we were entitled to some sort of prize for being the first Caucasians to go there in 2007, but I guess maybe there were some others there last week.

We redeemed our tickets for: 1 bug ring, 1 wand, 1 stickers, and 1 pack of Smarties.

How Does It Know?

We have a new $20 printer (Wal-Mart) that has a few unusual "features". Including a creepy voice that tells you more than you really need to know about the status of your print job. Yesterday Pete asked if he could print a picture he had created on the Mr. Potato Head game. I told him to just press the Print button.

Creepy computer voice: "Please load paper into the printer feeder"
Peter: "How does it know my name?"

They Don't Fight All of the Time

Here are some pictures of Pete and Sam enjoying some happy time walking together. This was a return trip home from a local Geocache that was close enough to the house that we decided to walk to the site. You can see from the attire that it was one of those 70 degree days we've had throughout January. Hooray global warming!

The item Pete is holding is the GPS receiver. He is generally our navigator when we go Geocaching.

Two Scoops

I remember the old Raisin Bran commercials where they said "Two Scoops" of raisins in every box made for a good breakfast.

On a related note, I hopped in the shower last Sunday morning after a quick "Pete, keep an eye on your brother". I emerged 10 minutes later, with Sam nowhere to be found. When I located him, he had helped himself to some "breakfast", which was a bag of Scoops chips he found in the pantry.

Pinewood Derby

Pete had fun Saturday with his cub scout pack at the annual Pinewood Derby race. The race was at his school. This is the third race of this year - we previously did the Rain Gutter Regatta and Space Derby.

Above is a picture of some of the cars in Pete's group. Pete's is #4, the blue one. It is actually a wedge shape, which is hard to see from this angle. Ours was one of the few cars to have a driver. This is because most people are obsessed with eliminating sources of drag, but our goal for our first time was more about having fun than trying to win first place. After cutting the wedge piece off of the original block, we gave that to Sam for his "car", and he decorated it and put a little driver on it. The green car shown is the one that finished first in the group. The gold one finished third. Pete finished fifth. (There were 13 cars in Pete's group.)

They did a lot of races, to make sure there were fair results. Pete's car raced six times, once in each lane against a variety of other cars. Despite this variability, he was remarkably consistent - finishing third in each of the six races. Below is a picture of the track. You can see Pete's name on the board, and his car ready to go in lane 6.


Here is Pete watching his race. You can also see the finish line. It was all computerized, so things went much more smoothly than the Space Derby. It still took about 2.5 hours to run all of the races.


Sam and mom came for a little while too. After a few races, Sam was ready to go to the gym next door to watch the basketball game.

This was a fun event for us. One thing we learned is not to spend too much time slaving over the car production. We spent a total of about about 2-3 hours on the car over about a week. The most important thing for next year is to make sure we have a good scale, and work on getting the weight exactly 5.0 ounces before going to the official weigh-in.

Homework

Sometimes it is difficult for Pete to do his homework in the afternoon, with Sam running around. Lately, we have had some success with giving Sam his own "homework" to do. So here is everyone working on their homework together.

Deal or No Deal - Home Version

Since Pete likes to watch the TV game show Deal or No Deal, we had thought about getting the home version for him as a Christmas gift. But if you think about it, playing the standard game of Deal or No Deal is even more pathetic than watching the show - primarily because you don't stand to win any of the money, which is where the show derives all of its drama. (If you don't believe me, go to this website and try playing the game more than 1 or 2 times to see how interesting it is.)

So we had an epiphany that we could create our own version of the game. We worked on it for a few weeks, and finally played with Pete on Saturday. It also helped Sam learn his numbers, because he would grab the envelopes after Pete selected them. It was great fun. We had no idea how much he would struggle with deciding whether to accept the deals.

In case you are wondering - Pete fared pretty well in the game. After opening 18 envelopes, he still had 3 of the top 4 prizes left on the board. But surprisingly he decided to take the next deal we offered, which was a game of "Hide and Seek". (Note, the remote controls in the picture are the "buttons" he used to indicate "deal" or "no deal"). I'm sure we will get to play again many more times in the future. Next time it will be Sam's turn to select the numbers. But they both get the prize.

Great Falls Geocache

We were all home for Martin Luther King Day, so we went to Friendly's and then to look for a geocache in Great Falls with Brian. It was a fun hike, except for some reason mom and dad left the backpack in the car, so by the end of the day dad was pretty tired.

Sam did manage to walk around long enough (in his Clifford sandals) to spot a turtle.

Apple on a Stick

Here is Pete eating an apple on a stick for snack. (He did eventually finish it). Thanks Parenthacks!

Guess Sam's Mood

Below are some pictures of Sam at the Campfire Carols event. See if you can match the correct mood with the picture.

a) Bemused

b) Tired
c) Bored

Where's Pete?

You need to be careful when you take Pete somewhere where there are woods nearby. It only takes him a few minutes to head off deep into the woods. One helpful strategy is to dress him in some bright colors. (As a counter-example, yesterday we did a woodsy geocache with Pete wearing a black shirt and jeans - not good).

So in the spirit of this advice, look for Pete in the picture below from our recent cub scout Campfire Carols excursion. Bear in mind, he was standing right next to me moments earlier when I started fiddling with the camera.

Campfire Carols

We went to an event in December with Pete's pack from Cub Scouts. It was billed as "Campfire Carols", although in reality it was more just "hang out in rural Virginia".

Some of the activities were "sit around", "hang out", and "wander down by the stream". This was the boys playing "see who can sit closest to the water":

To cap off the event, we sang three carols. This was Pete's den doing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", with a few props mixed in:

(notice that Sam did not want to be left out)

Next week we will post two games from this adventure - "Where's Pete" and "Guess Sam's Mood".

Geocaching

After getting a GPS device for Christmas, we have taken up a new family activity of Geocaching. You can follow our adventures on our new Geocaching blog.

Note, Sam comes with us too. But he is not in most of the pictures because he rides in the "flying backpack".

Sam in a Box

Well, there can't be a blog without a picture of a kid playing in a box. Sam decided this box was his house for a few days in December.


Unfortunately, I made the mistake of stepping in the box in front and he said "No! You're crushing the food in the refrigerator!"

Starry Night

Here is some artwork Pete brought home from school last week.


I'm hoping they didn't teach them the part about cutting off your ear.

Blueberry Muffins

Grandma and Grandpa came to visit last weekend. These were our activities:

- Geocaching*
- Piano Lesson*
- Karate*
- Dinosaur Playground*
- Billiards
- Breakfast at hotel
- Swimming at hotel**
- Open presents
- Happy Feet movie
- Bake blueberry muffins
- Watch Eagles win playoff game against Giants 23-20
- Breakfast at IHOP

* These are activities we did on Saturday (since grandma and grandpa usually arrive around 5:00pm)

**Sam and Pete really like the pool game "Marco Polo". It is fun in hotel pools where you are the only people swimming. Also, we invented a version where you don't say anything, and me and Sam try to locate Pete by just listening for his breathing.

If you were betting on how many times grandma and grandpa would make a wrong turn while driving on this trip, the correct answer was 3.

Last of the Ski Trip

Closing out the summary of our holiday ski trip, below are pictures from family time at the condo. (Since only 3 of the 14 people on the trip ventured down to the bottom of the slopes, there was plenty of family time).

Sam is great because he is always so excited to open his presents. Here he is opening a Lion King Smartridge for his V-Smile (with Pete in the background opening a big box of K'nex):



This was the best moment of the trip - Ashleigh reading "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" to the other children on Dec 24.



Here is Pete playing with his favorite new toy, Speed Stacks:



Here are Pete, Sam, and Sarah enjoying Uncle Paul's famous french toast at the kids table for Christmas breakfast:

Harrisonburg Children's Museum

We stopped at the Harrisonburg Children's Museum on the way to Snowshoe Mountain. Since we got there at 2:45, and they close at 3:00, it was a quick visit. But we made sure to stop for a full visit on the way home. This was a better museum than the Chesapeake Children's Musuem (which we described earlier here).

Here is Pete climbing on the rock wall. I'm not sure if he intended this, but from the right angle it almost looks like he is flying:


Sam sliding from the barn:


I couldn't convince Sam to let me paint his face ("everyone will laugh at me"), but of course Pete was game so I painted a scary face on Pete that Sam seemed to be excited about:


Now that Pete had his face paint, Sam was ready to give it a try. So here is Mr. Tiger getting ready to climb the wall: